Crab Sticks 101 for Mak­ing Sushi Rolls

Crab Sticks 101 for Sushi Roll Recipes. In this video I will talk about one of the essen­tial ingre­di­ents in mak­ing sushi. Crab sticks or imi­ta­tion crab sticks are a big part of any of my sushi nights. Know­ing the right kind to get and which ones to stay away from when mak­ing your sushi roll recipes. Sushi mark will talk about the dif­fer­ent kinds avail­able for your sushi rolls and sushi night recipes.

Hello, this is Sushi Mark here, with www.MySushiDaddy.com. Today I want to talk about crab sticks or the imi­ta­tion fish cakes or the imi­ta­tion crab cakes. What­ever you call them, they’re a vital role in any of my Sushi nights and prob­a­bly in yours as well.

Now, there are sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds of crab sticks and just to give you a lit­tle bit of back­ground on me; I’ve been eat­ing imi­ta­tion crab since I was a kid. My mom used to put them in mac­a­roni salad with may­on­naise and onions and of course with mac­a­roni. I fell in love with it then and have been a big fan of imi­ta­tion crab sticks and crab for that mat­ter too. Specif­i­cally imi­ta­tion crab sticks for many, many years — even before I started enjoy­ing Sushi. So I’ve always bought them and con­sumed them. I have more of a back­ground on the fish cakes or the imi­ta­tion crab sticks than most peo­ple just because I’ve always enjoyed them.

They are not all cre­ated equal so you really have to be care­ful on what prod­ucts you buy. This is not an ingre­di­ent to skimp on. You’re going to have to pay a decent price for this ingre­di­ent because if you get the bad ones, the ones made from China, and they’re kind of off color and they’re big sticks, they taste like card­board. They taste so bad and you can’t even make Sushi with them. It’s absolutely hor­ri­ble. The taste is ter­ri­ble. So let’s talk about what kind to buy.

Crab Sticks for Mak­ing Sushi Rolls

I have sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds here. The first type I’m going to show you is the type that I buy. I get from the Asian mar­ket or online. They come indi­vid­u­ally wrapped. You’re going to spend about $10.00 to $15.00 — $10.00 to $15.00 per pack­age. Each of them comes indi­vid­u­ally wrapped in some lit­tle plas­tic wrap and it shreds very eas­ily. Once you just rib your fin­gers across it, it would just shred up and that’s where you get the spicy crab from when you shred it all up. This is another kind of crab stick that is new on the mar­ket. It’s a lit­tle short. I like it a lit­tle longer for the Sushi rolls but you can always cut a cou­ple of them in there. It’s com­pet­i­tively price. The taste isn’t bad. I def­i­nitely would pre­fer my crab sticks that I get from the Asian mar­ket, but in a pinch, if I didn’t have access to them, I would say, this is a good alter­na­tive. And you’re look­ing at about $6.00 per pound. Which I mean is very eco­nom­i­cal con­sid­er­ing $10.00 to $15.00 for the good ones you get from online or the Asian mar­ket. But like I said, in a pinch, these will work as well.

Another one that I’ve used in the past, if I didn’t have access to my good imi­ta­tion crab sticks or the fish cakes as they’re called, are these kinds here – the Crab Selects. These are avail­able at most of your major gro­cery stores. Like I said, I def­i­nitely pre­fer the good ones. But if I don’t have them, these are a good alter­na­tive. Stay away from the ones that are cheaply made in China because they just don’t taste very good at all – like cardboard.

Nor­mally per roll, you’ll get two per roll. They’ll fit long ways in a Cal­i­for­nia roll. You can cut them up in lit­tle pieces and shred them. For spicy crab, you can put it on top of the roll, inside of the roll – it’s a very ver­sa­tile ingre­di­ent and an essen­tial ingre­di­ent in any of my Sushi nights. So I hope you enjoyed this video tuto­r­ial.